Rodeo Baby

“A woman,” Gramps barked. “Why else? He was young and foolish and heartbroken. Silly pup.”

“Who? Did the woman stay in town?”

“She married someone else. She’s still here.”

“Dad did all right with Mom. They seemed to be happy.” His mom had died five years ago.

Gramps motioned for Sam to come around to the back of his chair. “Push me out to the sunroom. Faces east. Too hot in the morning. Have to wait until afternoon. It’ll be cool enough now.”

Sam wheeled him down the hallway, with Chelsea walking alongside holding Gramps’s hand. “Which way?”

“Right at the far end.” He took a big plaid hankie out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Pretending to be a cowboy might be your first failure, Sam.”

No, not his first. Not even close.

What of his marriage? What of his wife leaving in the most dishonest way possible? What of not protecting himself from his father-in-law?

What of not being able to protect his child from the fallout?

He glanced at Chelsea. What of his failure to bridge the gap that separated them?

Sam positioned Gramps beside a window that looked out onto a golden field with low purple-gray hills in the distance.

“Can you visit while you’re staying in Rodeo or will that blow your cover?”

Blow his cover? “Gramps, this isn’t a spy movie. But, yeah, we’ll visit a lot. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” Or maybe they would. Were cowboys still expected to break in Mustangs? He didn’t have a clue. He’d have to look it up online. Why? No way could he fake that.

Could he fake any of it?

In the solarium, another resident, a tiny woman with an eye for Gramps and a tiny shih tzu in her lap caught Chelsea’s attention, and she went and played with the dog and talked to the woman.

Yet again, she had more smiles for everyone else than she did for him. A split second of despair rattled him. How did he bridge the gap?

“She sure likes animals, doesn’t she?” Gramps asked.

“She’s never met an animal she didn’t like.”

“How long you planning to stay?”

“I have a month to determine the intentions of these women.”

“How come you can take so much time off work? I know you’re the owner of the company, but shouldn’t you be there to oversee things?”

For a few tense moments, Sam worried in silence. He’d already explained all of this on the phone to Gramps before he came. “I no longer own the company. Tiffany got it as part of the divorce settlement. She bought me out. To be accu­rate, her father bought me out. Since he’d bankrolled the company for Tiff and me at the start and owned a controlling share, it was easy for him to pull the rug out from under me.”

The betrayal had come on so many levels. “Those two. That snake.” Aching with all he had to say, he nonetheless held back with Chelsea nearby. After all, Tiffany’s father was her grandfather.

Sam leaned against the wall. “I’m free for the next month.” He knew he sounded bitter. Divorce and losing his livelihood, even if he had come out ahead with millions in the bank, had never been part of his life’s plan. He told his grandfather about the new venture starting in a month.

“You sound excited.”

“I am, Gramps. I don’t like to be idle.” In fact, without the formation of the new firm, Sam didn’t know what he would do with his life. He’d never, not once, felt so rudder­less.

Even these months off since the company had been given over to Tiffany had been hell.

He felt better when he had purpose and activity driving his days. As well, there were those thoughts ringing through him, every day, about success and revenge.

Oh, yeah, he’d like to show Tiffany and her father how successful he could be without them. And he would. Be successful, that was.

He had a talent for business. Not so with this cowboy stuff. What had he been thinking?

“Always felt the same way myself,” Gramps said. “Didn’t want to be idle for a single second of the day.” They visited for an hour while Sam itched to get to the ranch, to find out how hard his job was going to be and whether he was truly up to the task.

On the way out, he stopped at the nurse’s desk and asked about Gramps’s doctor. He wouldn’t be in until Monday. Sam would have to wait for answers.

As soon as they left the building, Chelsea voiced what she’d obviously been thinking inside.

“Dad, I’m worried.”

“About Gramps? Me, too. He’s not himself.”

They got into the SUV and drove away.

“Dad...”

Sam glanced away from the road for a second. Chelsea chewed on her bottom lip.

“What is it, possum? Something worrying you? Spit it out.”

“You’ve been strange lately. Is it because of the divorce?”

“Strange how?”

He sensed her shrugging beside him. “I don’t know. More hard. Tougher. You were an easygoing guy and so much fun. I loved that about you. But now you don’t seem to like people anymore. You don’t trust anyone.”

“Yeah. True. That’s because of the divorce.” Sam hesitated to criticize Tiffany to her daughter. “I’m not comfortable talking to you about your mother behind her back, but her...”

“Her affair, Dad. I know what she did. She shouldn’t have slept with that guy.”

Sam hated that Chelsea knew about that kind of thing. “Her betrayal was profound,” he admitted. “It’s going to take a long time for me to trust like I used to.”

The farther they drove away from Gramps and the closer they got to the ranch, the more Chelsea slumped in her seat. She crossed her arms and settled into the sulk she’d been in for the drive out.

Gone were the smiles for Gramps and the old woman with her cute dog.

“I don’t want to stay with people we don’t know. I wish Gramps wasn’t in an old-folks’ home so we could stay with him.”

“You and me both, Chelsea.” He thought of the two-story house that sat on Gramps’s land. Tonight, they could have been sleeping in the very house his dad had grown up in if the townsfolk hadn’t talked Gramps out of his land.